


Communication

by CaffeinatedWriter



Category: Bully (Video Games)
Genre: Anxiety, Childhood Mental Illness, M/M, trans!pete
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-23
Updated: 2017-05-23
Packaged: 2018-11-04 04:18:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,143
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10983219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaffeinatedWriter/pseuds/CaffeinatedWriter
Summary: Mental illness is some heavy stuff, especially for a couple of kids. They don't talk about it.





	Communication

Pete has anxiety.

It’s so simple, abundantly obvious and yet, it’s years and years before anything gets done about it. The silence is heavy and Gary sees the way Pete compartmentalizes it while he tells himself it’s nothing.

Gary picks up on it before anyone else. Realizes it’s there years before everyone else stops dismissing it as characteristic shyness. Girls are, after all, timid creatures so why wouldn’t Pete refuse eye contact. Why wouldn’t he freeze, terrified in those seconds before an adult realized a spill or a mess or an incorrect answer?

They were kids and he doesn’t know it by name but in that they are the same in that way.

Except it’s not the same.

Gary thinks, by the look on Pete’s face in those moments, that they’ve shared the same bubble of panic. The inability to breath and a lifetime of dread in the span of three seconds that can last hours or days.

It chips away at you and they were so small in the beginning. Every millisecond of existence feels like the last and is equally too long and too short. That’s a lot for a kid. And there’s a loneliness when you’re that young where you’re sure it’s only you. Nobody else is ever going to understand so you choke it down because nobody survives outside of normality.

Nobody can know, but Gary does, and he understands.

The panic Gary experiences is generalized. Nothing makes Gary anxious, he just _is_. Constantly existing in a state of too much, _too much_ , **_too much_**. It’s sharp and pressing but it’s also the kind of constant that he can tune out if he exerts just the right amount of energy in other things.

He’s not suffocating; you just need to learn to thrive on little air.

Everything makes Pete anxious. At school it’s grades and homework and socializing and authority, balancing his dignity with avoiding confrontation. At home, it’s chores and expectation and more authority and being heard in a place where speaking up rocks unstable foundations. 

Everything in the world is Pete’s fault. Everything in the world is Pete’s obligation.

It’s the same and it’s not, but it’s something Gary understands.

They don’t talk about it, until they do, but that’s years down the road in the wake of misunderstanding and too much and falling, literally and figuratively. That’s later and right now, in the present and the past, they don’t talk about it.

As children, they couldn’t really. Not without a name to place a feeling they’re still half convinced is self-imposed. It’s not something you share with another person and Gary loves Pete, but not enough to drop the endlessly stupid facade that he hopes stops Pete from wondering if there’s something wrong with him.

Sometimes he’s angry, more than the average child. Sometimes, there’s a fire burning in his ribcage, smoking out the little oxygen he manages to survive on and there’s no choking down the feeling.

Gary is an aggressive person; he’s okay with Pete thinking that.

(He had no way of knowing Pete saw through that as clearly as he sees through everything that Gary projects.)

He bets if you ask anyone in town, they’d tell you Gary was a stupid but ultimately happy child. There’s no blame he can place with that; holds onto it like a filthy accomplishment.

Gary smiles so much more often in his childhood than he actually feels happiness.

Pete though, Pete shows even more on his faces and shares even less than Gary. The fragility of Pete’s anxious smile contrasts sharp and ugly against the blinding sight of the real thing. At least, Gary always thought so. 

He’s sure there are some people who wouldn’t know, who have only known the tight obliged upturn of lips. Those are the people who think, rather incorrectly, that Pete is a polite but ultimately mundane person.

Gary demands Pete’s eye contact, silent and stubborn perseverance, and receives it without question. Pete won’t criticize openly, won’t question without dire need, but regards Gary with all the immediate scrutiny of someone desensitized to his particular brand of nonsense.

He knows Pete as well as Pete knows him so Pete’s already telling face is an open book. Gary always knows when Pete is anxious.

They don’t talk about it.

There’s no need to. Not when Gary understands. Words aren’t needed when actions are telling and so he makes small efforts to relieve Pete of this nameless entity with things that only make sense by the feeling in his gut.

He always says what he means so Pete never has to wonder. It’s not always what Pete wants to hear but it’s honest and leaves no room for doubt, even for someone like Pete who rivals Gary’s own ability to twist something in his head until it feeds into the idea of some pre-existing insecurity.

Pete does the same, in his own way. A patience and unexpected softness that soothes fears that Gary hasn’t begun to process having. People, other kids, taunt. Poke at the soft spots that say Pete finds him intolerable. Annoying.

Gary knows he is but Pete is an avoider. If he doesn’t like something, he avoids it. If it’s unavoidable, and Gary knows he is this too, he exerts as little effort as possible to avoid confrontation.

There’s a lot of effort between them. The occasional blank look and scathing remark are less a show of annoyance and more a sign of comfort. 

Pete is polite to a fault but it’s not the same as the gentle way he sometimes regards Gary. That doesn’t stem from the unknown storm they share. It’s special, something between them.

When Gary goes away freshman year, they have a name for it. Pete has a name for it and it’s as if a name brings power because suddenly it’s unbearable. Simple functioning becomes impossible, fueling the paralyzing fear that _he is wrong_ , a mistake in the grand scheme of life.

Pete’s dad thinks it’s Gary’s fault but deep down, Pete knows it’s something that’s always been there. He thinks of the split second cracks in Gary’s mask before the smile is back and Pete is being dragged in a million directions.

There was something relatable in that, shameful and secret. Nobody will understand; nobody can know.

Pete has anxiety and it has nothing to do with Gary. It was there before Gary, a tiny seed not yet sprout, and it would have festered without him. This is Pete’s reality.

By the time Gary comes back, Pete’s starting to breathe again. It’s fragile. They can both feel the precarious balance of the other person. And they both think, “I’m a burden.” And they both think, “I don’t mind taking care of you.”

They both think, “I understand.”

They don’t talk about it, until they do.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, you can find me [here](http://beathimbacktotheghetto.tumblr.com).


End file.
